Photosynthesis is a complex process that can be potentially dangerous to the organism under many circumstances. For example, energy captured in the form of photons can exceed the rate at which the energy can be used, resulting in reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and cell damage. Many systems or mechanisms have evolved to cope with this challenge, some that are fast responding, such as photo protection via the qE response, and others that are slower responding, such as the induction of genes encoding proteins that can detoxify ROS.
What is not known is how these different mechanisms are integrated and the degree to which given mechanisms take precedence under specific environmental conditions. For example, the same mechanisms may be activated in the same series when plants at low temperature are subjected to a change in light intensity as those that occur when plants that are experiencing drought and also experiencing a change in light intensity. Therefore, understanding how real-time, dynamically fluctuating systems affect plant status (e.g. photosynthetic productivity, efficiency, growth or the like) are useful for improving a plant's response to the environmental conditions or cues (e.g. abiotic or biotic).
Moreover, rapid fluctuations in certain environmental conditions can require the action of certain protective mechanisms that are not required when the environmental condition is held constant. Plants and other organisms have evolved to cope with unpredictable, dynamically fluctuating environments or conditions, yet study or evaluation of these organisms is conducted largely under constant (laboratory) conditions. While this experimental design is extremely powerful, it is unlikely to detect novel biochemical and regulatory mechanisms that have valuable roles in nature. For example, disrupting key photosynthetic responses often have little effect on growth or photosynthesis in the laboratory, but are strongly deleterious in the field.